


Time to Write a New Song

by bethagain



Series: December Stories [8]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: / or & you choose the goggles, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Music, Singing, some things about angels and demons - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21726043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain
Summary: Angels have perfect singing voices. They're built that way.So do demons, but Hell doesn't want to hear it.Crowley and Aziraphale both love music, but it's not until after they'reon their own sidethat they can finally sing together.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: December Stories [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561195
Comments: 7
Kudos: 62





	Time to Write a New Song

**Author's Note:**

> Day eight of the 31 Days of Ineffables fanfic challenge. Ongoing thanks to [drawlight](https://www.tumblr.com/search/drawlight) on tumblr for starting this thing with a month's worth of prompts. 
> 
> Today's prompt was _choir._

Angels were built for many different purposes. Some were made to carry the word of God. They are fearsome in their shape and demeanor. They remind wayward men that there is a higher power, and they warn of consequences for those who forget. 

Some are symbols of justice. For God’s favored humans, they appear as beings of light, white robes and wings and sandals and all. They have an entirely different aspect when someone misbehaves in a way that catches Her eye. Everyone knows it’s Hell’s domain to carry out the actual punishment, but that horrifying nightmare creature pointing its finger toward the fires below? Yeah, that’s an angel.

Some angels exist simply to sing praises to God. Aziraphale always thought that was a little strange, to invent your own groupies and insist they stand around your throne shouting praises all the time. But then, She was ineffable. It wasn’t his place to understand. 

Aziraphale knew angels from these other orders, of course, but mostly just well enough to say hello in Heaven’s hallways. Only the higher-level staff, like Gabriel and Michael, had cross-order meetings on the regular. The main opportunity for the middle-level angels--the Principalities, the Virtues, the personal Guardian Angels--to cross paths with the rest was in the Choir.

That’s one of the things that all angels, regardless of their purpose, have in common. Every single angel, since the very dawn of time, has been created with a perfect singing voice built in.

Aziraphale would show up to Choir practice, and he’d take his place in the celestial harmonies. He’d hit each note perfectly every time, because it was impossible for an angel not to. Crystalline voices would fill all of Heaven’s realms.

Good lord, it was tedious. 

It’s a good thing singing comes easy to an angel, because--depending on the century--Aziraphale would spend the time wondering if he’d be able to get over to Italy for Monteverdi’s new opera. Or, what Beethoven was up to these days. Or if that Scott Joplin, with the interesting ragtime music, had anything new in the works. 

Hell has its own rules about music. When an angel is cast out of heaven, they lose their closeness to God, and they lose their state of grace. What’s less commonly known is that they get to keep their singing voices. 

You might think that’s a lucky oversight. Until you hear Hell’s choir. 

In Hell’s concert halls, harmony is forbidden. Dissonance is the goal, the more grating the better. The things that win music awards in Hell are cacophony and discord. The closer you can get to fingernails on a blackboard, the more praise you’ll get from Satan.[1]

Crowley went through the motions. He’d make the effort to find exactly the wrong note. Sing in the wrong key. Miss the beat by just enough to throw off the demon next to him, too.

He couldn’t say so, of course, but he _hated_ it. 

It made his corporation’s head hurt. He could feel his teeth vibrate with the clashing tones. If he’d been human, the decibel level would probably have blown out his eardrums. 

The worst part of all, though, was that demons weren’t allowed to sing any other way. 

Over the years, music became a way Aziraphale could touch the lives of humans. He sang in church choirs, mostly remembering that his corporation wasn’t supposed to be a tenor. And especially not a soprano. He joined in with sailors singing sea shanties, with soldiers chanting as they marched. He hummed, sometimes, as he puttered about his bookshop, and would-be customers would linger among the shelves to listen. 

Over the years, Crowley collected records, then cassettes, then CDs. 

Sometime around the 1980s, Aziraphale got involved with a local a cappella group. They sang in a nearby church basement, the sound rising up through its street-level windows. 

Crowley found excuses to walk by.

“You never sing,” Aziraphale said once, hundreds of years ago, as they sat listening to a minstrel and he caught Crowley tapping his foot.

“Nah,” Crowley said. “I can, but you wouldn’t want to hear it.”

A few months after Armageddon wasn’t, when it looked like maybe Heaven and Hell really would be leaving them alone, Aziraphale lifted his hand to knock on the door of Crowley’s flat. He hadn’t been invited, precisely, but Crowley had said “come by anytime.” 

Aziraphale hoped the invitation still stood. It had taken him a few weeks to work up the nerve to actually do it. 

Crowley came to the door looking confused. “Everything all right, Angel?” Behind him, Aziraphale could hear the television.

“Yes,” he found himself stuttering. He held up a bottle of scotch. “I just thought… was in the neighborhood…”

“Oh. Right.” Crowley still looked uncertain, but he stood back to let Aziraphale in, then headed for the room with the TV on the wall. “Let me turn this off.”

Aziraphale, following him, caught a glimpse of the screen, where Bea Arthur was at the refrigerator, about to bring out a cheesecake. “Oh, I like this show!”

Crowley paused, remote control in hand.

A little bit later, they were sitting at opposite ends of Crowley’s sleek leather sofa, each on their second tumbler of scotch. Crowley’s kitchen, always ready to serve, had produced a cheesecake in a box from Melrose and Morgan. The episode of Golden Girls came to a close, credits rolled, and a new episode followed. 

Aziraphale, more comfortable than he’d been in a while--belly full of cheesecake, head light with scotch, and possibly an actual, real friend sitting beside him--found himself singing along with the theme song. 

To his astonishment, beside him, a soft baritone voice joined in.

It’s good that the walls in Crowley’s building were thick, because by morning, they’d figured out a half-dozen harmonies on the Golden Girls theme song, moved on to the choral section of Beethoven’s Ninth, messed about with some Gregorian chants, and now, as the sun peeked over the horizon, were drunkenly matching each other note for note on the chorus of “Stand By Me.”

“I should go,” Aziraphale said when the song was done. The cheesecake was gone and the scotch bottle was empty. He didn’t want to overstay his welcome. 

“All right,” Crowley said, not making a move to get up.

Aziraphale wasn’t sure if that was a signal to go-- _can’t be bothered to see you to the door_ \--or an invitation to stay. He scooted to the edge of the sofa cushion, then brushed the wrinkles from his trousers and straightened his waistcoat as he stood. “Maybe we could do this again sometime? You could teach me to sing some of that be-bop.”

All Crowley said was, “Sure,” but his sudden smile was an unmistakable yes.

1Mostly Satan’s praise consists of things like not being tossed into a pit of despair this week. Or not being abandoned in darkness. Which are things you would hope weren’t going to happen anyway. If Satan’s really impressed, though, you might be let off the hook for the team-building activities at the next demonic all-staff meeting. [return to text ]


End file.
